


The Waters and the Wild

by soera



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Canon, M/M, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:26:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soera/pseuds/soera
Summary: The Torchwood team comprises Jack, Owen, Tosh and Gwen. They've just encountered the faeries of Small Worlds. Unfortunately, they've also caught the eye of another type of faerie, and he's rather intrigued by Jack.





	1. bluebells and roses

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Livejournal, 26-05-2010.

_They take the girl-child with them._

_With them the mortals. One. Two. Three. Four._

_One._

_Not mortal._

_Taste the air. Not mortal. And yet human._

_Closer. Closer. Breathe._

_This one._

_This one is intriguing._

_Take it._

He has been many people, worn many faces through a long lifetime. At the moment, he is Captain Jack Harkness, who has once lost good men and is now losing more. This time, he knows it is his fault.

His team refuses to look at him as they return to the SUV. The girl’s mother has been Retconned, will never remember the awful truth of what happened to her daughter and family. Her mind will build reasons, will create a truth that is palatable to her.

This is how the human mind works. It will always surprise him with its resilience.

“What else could I do?” he demands.

Silence. He expects it, and yet it hurts him to the quick.

What else could I do, he repeats silently. One girl for the world. One girl who wanted to leave. They could never have taken her otherwise.

When they return to the Hub, the team exits the SUV in sullen silence, still refusing to look at him. Captain Jack Harkness sits in the empty vehicle, slowly losing his armour. It is Jack who finally leaves, finally makes his way down to the Hub. For the first time in years, he is not looking forward to returning.

He watches as Toshiko and Owen confer by her workstation. He suspects he knows what they are speaking of. He knows he does not want to hear it. They pack their bags, call up to Gwen. She exits from the conference room, mouth set in a grim line.

What else could I do, Jack wonders. It has been a long time since he has felt so betrayed. By his team. By himself. There is, he thinks, little difference between the two. One defines the other too completely.

He does not remember what it is to be himself.

They walk towards him. Or not. They walk towards the exit, which happens to be in line with him. Jack looks at them and pretends that they are looking back. That they are meeting his eye, that they understand. Then he steps aside so that they will not have to detour around him. If they wish to pretend he does not exist, who is he to stand in their way?

“Who are you?” someone asks. The voice sounds like it is dyed with wind.

Jack freezes. His team whirls.

(Suddenly, he is being acknowledged.)

“What was that?” Gwen demands.

“Who are you?” the voice repeats. The air is suddenly thick with the scent of flowers. It does not smell like roses.

Jack swallows. “Who wants to know?” he asks, stepping away from the team. (Away from them, don’t hurt them, not them.)

“Me-I-we,” the voice sings, and it is suddenly a multitude of voices and Jack winces at the way the sound tears at his ears. “Who are you? Who-are-you-who-are-you-who-are-you –”

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he says with a confidence he doesn’t feel. The voices fall abruptly silent.

“Jack,” Toshiko says urgently. She looks terrified as she looks at her computer screen. When, Jack wonders, had she gotten over there? “I’m registering an anomaly here in the Hub. According to the monitors, we’re standing in a forest.”

Jack swallows. “Who are you?” he asks. “What do you want? You’ve got the girl, what more do you want?”

A laugh, like an eagle cresting through sunlight. “They took the girl-child,” the voice sing-songs. “Took her away to dance with them.”

Jack moves further away from the team, feeling somehow that the heavy presence is following him. “You’re saying you’re not one of them?” he asks sceptically. Get out, he thinks desperately at his team. Why are you still here?

“Noooo,” the voice drawls. Jack feels abruptly like he is talking to a five-year-old. A five-year-old who could kill him where he stands. Might even be able to make it stick.

“Then who are you?” he asks.

“Who are you?” the voice replies.

“I’ve told you,” Jack says. “Captain Jack Harkness.”

“Liar,” the voice accuses him.

“That’s who I am,” he maintains, feeling icy fear trickle through his stomach. He wants an alien. He wants a Slitheen. He wants a Weevil. He wants something tangible he can fight. He wants something he understands.

“Liar,” the voice repeats, and this time it’s changed. It sounds adult. Male. It still sounds like it is accented with wind and water.

“This is who I am,” Jack repeats with conviction.

The air thickens around him. He can’t breathe for the smell of flowers. Then there is something in his throat and his lungs and then he simply can’t breathe at all.

The last thing he sees before he falls into blackness is the vague outline of a face, shimmering in ghostly light.

* * *

Jack gasps back into life surrounded by his team. Two of said team are looking like they’ve seen a ghost. They aren’t, he thinks fuzzily, too far off. Gwen helps him sit up and for once, he is thankful that at least one of them knows his secret.

“You were dead,” Owen says, jabbing a finger towards him. “You were dead. You weren’t breathing. _You had no pulse._ ”

Jack tries to speak and finds himself gagging on petals. He shakes Gwen off, turns on his side, spits them out. Blue, but ripped as they are, he cannot tell what flowers they came from. “Accident,” he says shortly, pulling himself up. “Long ago. Short version is that I can’t die. Just doesn’t stick.”

“You can’t die,” Owen repeats in disbelief.

“Seriously?” Toshiko asks, eyes wide.

“It’s true,” Gwen says. “I saw Suzie shoot him in the head. Also saw him get up after that.”

Jack takes a deep breath. The only flowers he smells comes from the petals he has spit out. Sweet and cloying, but now faint. The heavy presence has vanished.

“What happened?” he asks, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

Toshiko shakes her head. “You just – started gasping,” she says.

“Mouth wide open,” Owen adds, apparently recovering. “Kind of unattractive.”

“Not what I hear from most people,” Jack says, brushing off his coat, avoiding Gwen’s solicitous touches. It takes a moment for his meaning to dawn on Owen, who then gives him the most disgusted look he can muster.

“And then you collapsed,” Toshiko says. “The wind stopped and we were able to get to you.”

“Wind?” Jack asks.

“Didn’t you feel it?” Gwen asks incredulously. “There was this amazingly strong wind blowing around. We couldn’t move against it.”

“His coat wasn’t moving,” Owen says. “I don’t think he felt it at all.” He looks expectantly at Jack.

Jack feels adrift, cut off from what he knows and expects. Perhaps, he thinks, the shock of a (sort of) immortal leader will set in later. After they have dealt with the faeries. Again.

He wants to rest. He wants sleep. He wants to not dream of roses and tunnels, of the creaking sway of railway tracks, their lullaby rhythm.

_Rock-a-bye baby on the tree-top_  
_When the wind blows, the cradle will rock_  
_When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall_  
_And down will come baby, cradle and all._

“Jack?” Gwen asks, giving him a strange look. They all are, actually, and that is when he realises that he has been singing the lullaby under his breath.

“Ever wonder about that song?” he asks. “Kind of morbid for a lullaby, isn’t it?”

“What’re you talking about?” Toshiko asks.

“Never mind,” Jack says. “Toshiko, did you get anything from the monitors?”

She looks glad to be of use, falling back instantly into a professional demeanour. Owen should take lessons from her. “As I mentioned earlier,” she says. “The monitors were registering the forest here in the Hub.”

“The forest?” Jack asks, sitting down. His legs suddenly feel weaker than they should be. As if he has just run a marathon. Perhaps, he thinks, he has.

“Yes,” Toshiko says. “Trees, birds, insects, the whole lot. None of our equipment or the outside world was being picked up at all.”

“How is that possible?” Owen asks.

“Don’t know,” Toshiko says. “That thing must have done something.”

“Pulling through,” Jack whispers, and only realises he has spoken aloud when they all turn to him.

“What’s that?” Gwen asks, frowning.

“It was trying to pull me through,” Jack says, getting up again. He is tired, but he needs to pace. “That’s not possible, that shouldn’t be possible. They don’t take adults!” He knows what the faeries are, he knows their connection to children.

Then he sees the bluebell on the desk. It was not there a moment ago.

Unlike most adults, he does not wear a shield of disbelief. And yet, his age should be protection. He cannot be turned. He is not Chosen.

He is not Chosen.

But faeriekind does not need reasons to meddle with human lives.

* * *

Jack sends the team home. Inside him, like a hard kernel or a tumour, is the knowledge that whatever was in the Hub with them, it only wants him. Away from him, the team is safe.

He hopes.

Those hopes are shattered when, half an hour later, he receives a call from a frantic Toshiko. There are bluebells in her house, she cries, bluebells all over her furniture, in her kitchen, her living room, her bedroom.

Ten minutes after that, a call from Owen. He curses a lot more than Toshiko, but relays the same message.

And five minutes after, Gwen. The same.

“Why are you doing this?” Jack whispers.

“Who are you?” a childish voice asks him.

“Jack Harkness,” he says, and this time adds, “That’s who I am now. I don’t remember who I used to be.”

A pause. “Not a lie,” the voice concedes.

“I know I’m not him,” Jack says desperately. “But that’s all I know how to be now.”

“Not a lie,” the voice says again. “Jack Harkness. Jack Harkness. Jack Harkness.” A laugh, high and bell-like. This, Jack thinks, must be what Estelle thought of her faeries. This must by what she heard. It is impossible to believe such a sound could be made by a creature of evil.

“Jack Harkness,” he repeats. “Who are you?”

“Not them,” the voice says.

“You’re not the ones that took Jasmine,” Jack says. He suddenly knows that this is the truth, but the depth of his belief takes him by surprise. He is immediately suspicious of how easily he believes that fact.

“No need for the girl-child,” the voice says dismissively. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack thinks he sees light. Light, and a figure in the light.

“Then what do you want?” Jack asks, desperate now to find something to keep his team safe.

The answer, when it comes, is not what he was hoping for.

“You.”

* * *

Blink, and the bluebells vanish.

Rhys will wake up the next morning and not remember the bluebells that covered him as he slept. Gwen will explain away her red eyes as the product of a late night. She will feel the distance between her and her loyal boyfriend grow with every lie she is forced to tell him. His love suffocates her in guilt. Only when she leaves the house, stepping out into the crisp morning air, does she finally feel like she can breathe.

Owen wakes from an uneasy sleep. He is curled away from a faceless woman (not Katie), his clothes strewn around her room. He crawls out of bed, his head pounding insistently as he collects his clothes and throws them on. He wakes the woman up before he leaves, not because he cares for her, but because he will not leave her door unlocked behind him. That much is all he is capable of giving her.

Toshiko has spent the night at a hotel. She dreads going home in the morning, considers going straight in to work. But Jack will want to know what has happened, and so she cautiously pushes the door open, half-expecting a faerie to jump out at her. She is greeted instead by a pristine apartment. The faint smell of bluebells hangs in the air, but there are no flowers in sight. She carefully shuts the door again and tries not to shiver all the way to the Hub.

Morning comes to Jack only in the slow progression of a clock’s hands. Time means nothing in the Hub, which sees no light, no seasons. A moment is eternal, and it is in the moment that Jack lives. He has not slept the entire night, and so has felt the bluebells caressing his body. Has felt each petal as it was laid to rest on him.

It does not feel malignant.

He feels like a fish, considering a baited hook.

Slowly, he rises, feeling the bluebell petals slide off him like lovers’ hands. Work, he tells himself. There is work to be done, and no time for distractions.

A whisper of a laugh comes to him on the still air.

* * *

“What’s happening, Jack?”

Unsurprisingly, it is Gwen who asks the question. Jack looks at her for a moment, wishing he could understand her. She is too far removed from him. Sometimes he wishes he could close that gap, could relearn what it is these people around him seem to instinctively grasp.

Mostly, he is glad for the distance. Without it, he would have been driven insane long ago.

“Are you asking me to explain the faeries?” Jack asks, looking away from her, to his left. “Sorry. Can’t be done.”

“When I went home, all the flowers had disappeared,” Toshiko says quietly. She is looking down at her Starbucks cup. She has not been able to bring herself to drink so much as a sip. Every time she does, the smell of coffee is replaced by the sweet smell of bluebells. It is only in her mind, she knows it is only in her mind, but she cannot help herself.

“I don’t think it will come after you any more,” Jack says. He is not looking at any of them, fixing his gaze on some far-off spot instead.

“How do you know that?” Owen demands. “Or, more to the point, it came after all of us last night. What about you?”

Jack’s eyes skitter over Owen, never quite landing on him. He feels distant, cut off from his own body. Disconnected. “Bluebells,” he says. “And a conversation.”

“It talked to you?” Gwen asks, eyes widening. She looks like a startled mouse.

“In a manner of speaking,” Jack says, looking once again off to the left.

“Dammit, Jack,” Owen growls. “Can’t you even look at us?”

“Do you want me to?” Jack asks calmly. He cannot feel the emotions he thinks he should. Shock, perhaps, and he tries to analyse himself. Not in the clinical sense of the word. But this will catch up to him later. Perhaps.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Toshiko asks, upset but trying not to show it.

“Yesterday, none of you wanted to look at me,” Jack points out.

“You shouldn’t have given Jasmine up,” Gwen states.

“What else could I do?” Jack asks, eyes fixed on that empty space to his left. Still, he refuses to look at them.

“Something,” Owen says. “Anything else. We could have fought them.”

“They aren’t alien,” Jack says. “They aren’t human. They’re creatures of time and myth, get that through your heads. There’s nothing we can do against them.” His voice drops. “And she wanted to leave. That was the only way we could have kept her, if she’d wanted to stay.”

“Why wouldn’t she have stayed?” Gwen asks in frustration. “She had everything here.”

“Obviously not,” Jack says. “And there’s nothing we can do about it now. Do we have any actual work to do?”

“What about your faerie stalker?” Owen asks.

“It won’t bother any of you again,” Jack says.

“And you?” Toshiko asks pointedly.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “But really. What’s it going to do?” His lips twist in a mocking smile. “Kill me?”

* * *

There are pros and cons to travelling out into the countryside. On the one hand, it is a chance to get away from the Hub and the memory of bluebells. On the other hand, the journey will take them further into faerie domain. Possible faerie domain. They are not everywhere, though some days, it seems like it.

In the end, he decides that they will go after all. It looks like an easy case. A chance for them to feel good about what they do, feel empowered in the wake of their recent helplessness.

Afterwards, Jack will decide that this was not his best idea to date.

“Tell me,” he hisses down at the bastard he’s got pinned. Gun in one hand, knee ready to dig into the open wound at any provocation. It almost scares him how easy it is to slip back into his old role, his old job. It would scare him if he did not have something to do.

A bluebell laugh on the wind as he hot-wires a tractor and crashes it through the wall. Toshiko, beautiful Toshiko, on her knees and bloodied, Gwen and Owen looking half-dead on their feet. It is simplicity itself to cock the gun and fire again, again, again, switching to his handgun when he runs out of ammunition. He can barely hear himself screaming.

He does hear the encouraging voice of the wind.

A last shot. They sprawl there before him, wounded, the fight having left them. Predators turned prey. He wants to kill them, wants them to bleed. With great difficulty, he forces himself not to slit their throats where they lie.

Gwen has been shot. Toshiko has been beaten. Owen is possibly the only one not injured, other than Jack himself. Shock is settling in for all of them, and Jack struggles to keep down the rage as he deals with the incompetent local law enforcement (why didn’t you notice, why didn’t you stop this) and tardy ambulances.

Owen accompanies Gwen in one ambulance. Jack wants to go with Toshiko, but he cannot afford to leave the SUV behind. Instead, he turns his fury into an escort for both ambulances, blazing through the roads at speeds far beyond legal.

Hospital bathrooms are drab and unbelievably repulsive. Jack stands there before the mirror, smelling meat and blood and the stink of fear.

“Jack Harkness,” says the voice.

Jack closes his eyes. “Not now,” he whispers.

“Jack Harkness,” the voice insists. “Do you seek justice?”

Jack’s eyes snap open. He starts to speak, then stops. The pieces fall into place. He knows what is being offered. What he does not know is what his response should be. To refuse is to inflict more suffering on himself, and he has never been a masochist. To accept is to allow something he has spent so long trying to unlearn.

He remembers the slick blood under his fingers, the exact, soft spot to stimulate every pain receptor in the vicinity with the mildest of pressures. He remembers the force with which he’d dug into that yielding flesh. It had been so easy.

“Do you seek justice, Jack Harkness?”

Jack takes a deep breath, staring at the light he can see in the mirror. If he turns, he knows it will vanish. But like this, through a half-glimpse in a mirror, he thinks he can see a face. Blue eyes. Bluebell eyes.

“Yes,” he says.

* * *

When the news comes that the cannibals were all found suffocated in their cells, Jack is not surprised. His team is, until further news comes in. They were all found to have bluebell petals stuffed down their throats. In their lungs.

Jack endures the questions he cannot answer. He loves his team dearly, but they refuse to accept that there are some things beyond their ken. Beyond human perception.

He can feel Toshiko’s retreat. His poor girl. She has always sought solace in the safety of numbers. Now, more than ever, their reliability reassures her. She loses herself in her work, and only rarely lifts her head to wonder if she smells bluebells.

Until Mary.

Jack feels the flare of anger burn through him again. Suzie. Toshiko. Why does his team keep betraying him? They’re going, he tells himself morbidly, in the order they were hired. He wonders when it will be Owen’s turn, or Gwen’s.

He sends Mary to the centre of the sun and hears a satisfied trill of laughter.

* * *

Suzie. Again.

The Hub is in lockdown and Jack is panicking quietly. He is going to have to have words with Gwen when they get her back. He refuses to think of the alternative. He scripts out her formal reprimand. There is a reason he is the leader. His team cannot keep going behind his back.

“Jack Harkness,” sings that familiar voice. Toshiko and Owen jerk sharply.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Do you seek justice?”

The words die on his tongue. There are so many ways this could go. So many possibilities. So many things to consider. One mistake here could cost him everything.

“Do you seek justice, Jack Harkness?”

He forces out the word. “No.”

Toshiko is able to cobble together a signal that gets them through to Swanson. Jack is in no mood for the little band she gathers to laugh at their predicament. A few biting words about their lack of concern for the fact that there is a serial killer loose on their streets convinces them to work with rather than against Torchwood.

The scent of bluebells follows Jack wherever he goes. He takes to avoiding Toshiko, who cringes every time the scent hits her.

Shooting Suzie does no good. Shooting the Glove does. Jack feels a moment of sick, vindictive pleasure as Suzie dies again.

* * *

“I thought the faeries were done with,” Toshiko says.

“With you, yes,” Jack replies after a moment.

“And you didn’t think we should know?” Owen asks angrily.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Jack says. “And they won’t bother you.”

“But it’s not safe having them around!” Gwen exclaims.

“Actually,” Jack says thoughtfully. “I think it’s just one.”

“Because that makes it so much better,” Owen says.

Jack shrugs. “It’s definitely from a different clan than those that took Jasmine.” He eyes the wide screen as if it will provide him with the answers he longs for. “Do you know what bluebells mean?”

“Constancy and gratitude,” Toshiko says. Jack slants a surprised look at her and she blushes. “I looked it up after…”

Jack nods slowly. “Either kindness or gratitude. Specifically, a bluebell means you want to say something special.”

“The last I checked,” Owen interjects. “Red roses meant love, not death.”

“Depending on who you ask,” Jack says. “Red roses also signify a job well done.”

The words hang between them heavily.

“I’m sure they thought it was,” Gwen murmurs, finally.

“Well, if a bluebell means saying something special,” Toshiko says. “What’s this faerie trying to say?”

“If we figure that out, we might be able to figure out how to get rid of it,” Gwen says eagerly. Even Owen looks pleased at the prospect.

Jack shakes his head. Once again, they are falling into the trap of believing that the faeries are explicable creatures. He knows that they are not, and that believing they are is the first step to being entrapped by them. “It might have a message for me,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to tell me. Or that it’s something I’ll want to hear.”

A chuckle, like a sigh through the trees. The team flinches. Jack doesn’t.

* * *

He sees the light more frequently now. Half-glimpses, only peripherally visible. Dots and sparks that spin away in maddening circles when he tries to focus. In the end, he resigns himself to what will happen. As long as his team is safe, it no longer matters.

He seldom sleeps. When he does, he wakes up to a bluebell on his chest. He burned the first one, stamped out the ashes in childish fury. The subsequent ones fare better. In their glass vase they sit beside his bed, never wilting. Drooping towards him. He imagines them brushing his face, soothing him to sleep.

Dangerous, to believe that a faerie might provide comfort.

Even so. Even so.

He gasps to life. There is a Weevil on the ground next to him. Dead. Dead, having torn out his throat. He puts a hand to his neck, touches the freshly-healed wound. His shirt is soaked in blood, but save a small smear on his skin, there is no evidence of the mortal injury.

“Not mortal,” whispers the wind. “Human, but not mortal.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, standing unsteadily. He will have to get the Weevil back to the SUV somehow, without falling over. It will not be easy. He feels drunk. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

A laugh. It sounds friendly. Jack catches himself. That way lies madness.

Strong arms wrap around him from behind. He stiffens, his back arched in panic. It feels like a human body that is pressed up against him. He knows it is not.

“What do you want?” he asks, teetering on the knife-edge of terror.

“You,” the voice replies.

“But _why_ ,” he says, and there it is, all that emotion he has not been feeling, all packed into those two little words. He feels like he is standing on a cliff-edge and the rocks are crumbling beneath him. He cannot find the strength to step back. Step back? Into what?

But what else can he do?

He takes a deep breath, shudders, and relaxes all at once into the arms holding him. A breathy chuckle sounds in his ear. Jack closes his eyes and imagines that he can taste sunlight.

* * *

Every time he dies and comes up, the faerie returns. At some point, Jack thinks, something will have to give. He has already stepped halfway into the faerie’s trap. The consequences of that decision remain to be seen.

On Christmas Eve, the tightrope snaps.

Jack comes back to life in Toshiko’s car. Gasps in that fatal air, barely manages to get out before he is overwhelmed again. He comes back to life for the second time on the cold, dirty floor.

Toshiko is not happy to hear that John Ellis has decided to kill himself in her car. Jack decides not to tell her that he sat with John while he did so.

“Time-lorn,” the wind advises him.

“So was I,” he says petulantly.

The wind ruffles his hair playfully, snatching away the smell of petrol and replacing it with bluebells. The scent, Jack finds, is oddly comforting.

“Mine,” whispers the wind, and dances away, laughing.

Jack suddenly feels cold.

* * *

No one notices anything abnormal about the young man standing by the water tower. He is impeccably dressed in a suit. His skin is fair and his cheeks are pinking in the sun. His dark hair is neatly arranged, short tufts pushed into place. His eyes are clear, pale blue, but in the right light, they seem to darken into the exact shade of a bluebell.

He looks as if he has simply stepped out of the office for lunch.

Jack knows otherwise.

“I thought your kind never showed themselves,” he says, standing exactly five feet away. He cannot bring himself to move closer.

“We prefer not to,” the man says in an eminently normal voice.

“But?” Jack asks, raising an eyebrow.

The man smiles at him, holding out a hand. Such human gestures, Jack thinks. “Jones,” he says. “Ianto Jones. I rather like the name. It has a pleasant sound, does it not? And you are the infamous Captain Jack Harkness.”

If he did not know what this creature was, Jack thinks, he would know whose bed he would be in tonight. As it is –

A wicked smirk curves the man’s – creature’s – Ianto’s lips. “You could join me,” he says. “I would be most amenable.”

“Who even talks like that anymore?” Jack scoffs. He ignores the multitude of meanings that lay hidden in Ianto’s words.

“I do,” Ianto says, and takes a step forward, and another, and another. He is almost exactly the same height as Jack, and his lips are so very close. Jack watches as his eyes shift between ice and bluebell.

“I don’t have time for this,” Jack says. “I really don’t.”

A gossamer touch to his lips. Ianto has not moved. It is like being kissed by music. Jack is not sure he remembers how to breathe. He does not know if it is arousal or terror that clutches his lungs. He suspects it is both.

He blinks, and Ianto is gone.

* * *

“I’ll take care of you,” he tells Toshiko, and means it. It is not safe to be a Japanese in Britain during the second World War. She is a decoder, will remain so and will remain under his protection.

He imagines, briefly, having to live through this time period again. Poor Toshiko. How will she manage, without the technological toys she has grown so used to? Without the myriad comforts she is so accustomed to, that she will only notice when they are gone? She will age while he remains, unchanging. A friend, then the son of a friend, looking out for those his father cared for. Estelle, again.

Captain Jack Harkness. The real one. His own identity slips a little further away from him. This is who he wants to be. This brave man who will die tomorrow. Who will save his men and will die tomorrow.

He watches as Captain Harkness walks away with his sweetheart.

“You’re mine,” a voice says petulantly in his ear. He turns, thoroughly unsurprised to find Ianto standing there before him.

“You seem to have decided on that,” he replies coolly.

Bluebell eyes narrow. “Mine,” Ianto pronounces with finality. “Remember that.”

This time, Jack takes Ianto’s hand, unwilling to let the creature loose amongst these people. He pulls Ianto along to a quieter corner of the ballroom. Privacy, of sorts. “You have no claim on me,” he says, intently. (why me why are you so fixated on me what is your problem why can’t your kind ever leave me alone you terrify me)

Ianto smiles through him. Jack can feel his heart thumping violently, a bass drum calling to war. Ianto raises a hand and places it delicately over Jack’s chest.

“You’re interesting,” he informs him. “I’m keeping you.”

“I’m not a _toy_!” Jack hisses.

“Mine,” Ianto says with conviction, and then his eyes grow arctic. “Don’t let him touch you.” And between one heart-beat and the next, he has vanished.

Jack steps back and takes a quick glance around. He hopes that no one has noticed Ianto’s impromptu disappearing act. He would be hard-pressed to come up with a plausible answer at that particular moment. Who is it that Jack is meant to keep a distance from?

His eyes automatically seek out Captain Harkness. His breath stutters momentarily. No. No. No.

Toshiko. He forces his legs to work. He should find Toshiko.

* * *

He dances with Captain Harkness.

He kisses him.

In retrospect, it was a remarkably stupid thing to do.

* * *

Owen has opened the Rift.

Owen has opened the Rift and Captain Jack Harkness is dead and Jack is so very tired. The absolute last thing he wants is to climb down into his room and be confronted by bluebells.

They are everywhere. Cascading off his furniture in rivers. The thick, sweet smell of them is slowly strangling him. His room is strangely untouched, otherwise. He was expecting overturned chairs, torn papers, broken trinkets. The aftermath of a tantrum. Instead, he finds bluebells. And in the middle of them, Ianto.

“You let him touch you,” Ianto says, as if speaking to a particularly dim-witted child.

“Yes,” Jack says. This is what he has been waiting for. And now that it has come to this, he finds himself calm. His nerves are settled, quiescent. Anger is a whetstone on which he sharpens his words. “I wanted him to.”

“I told you not to,” Ianto says, his eyes flashing blue fire.

“But I wanted him to,” Jack repeats, and then, deliberately adds. “I wanted him. Unlike you.”

Ianto’s face twists into something unpleasant, and Jack knows that he has made an error. Perhaps even a fatal error. He knows this even before he feels his lungs suddenly contract, feels the air rush out of them, replaced by something thick and heavy and sickeningly sweet.

He gasps back to life with petals in his mouth. Ianto is no longer in the room. More than that, he can no longer feel Ianto’s presence near him, the way it has been for the past six months.

He stumbles to his feet. Looks around. The masses of bluebells have disappeared. So too have the bluebells he has been keeping in the vase. The glass vase stares at him accusingly. He tips the water out onto the floor and overturns the vase.

There is a single bluebell left in the room, on his pillow. He picks it up and examines it. Unlike all the others, this one is a deep, vibrant purple. A purple hyacinth.

“Sorrow,” he murmurs. “A request for forgiveness.”

He places the lonely stalk on his table and climbs into bed. There is an empty space next to him where Ianto used to perch. Used to look over his shoulder and watch what he did. He is rid of Ianto now. He is rid of the faerie now. He may have to pay a further price later, but for now, he is safe.

He closes his eyes. Sleep is a long time coming.

* * *

In the second before Owen shoots him, Jack sees something like light behind the younger man.

“No!” he yells, and then the bullet slams into his head and he is incapable of doing anything else.

He comes back to life to find that the team has opened the Rift. Have done the one thing he has always forbidden them from doing. Well, he thinks to himself bitterly. He was only waiting on Owen and Gwen, after all.

But they are alive. They are alive and there are no bluebells anywhere to be found. Jack wonders if Owen knows how close he came to death.

There is no time to think of that now. Now – now, he needs to fix what his team has done.

* * *

There is something in the darkness.

This is new.

The blackness rolls away just far enough to reveal Ianto standing before him. His arms are crossed and one foot is tapping on the not-floor in a human gesture of impatience.

“Hi,” Jack says.

“ _Humans_ ,” Ianto says in a tone of absolute disgust.

“We are,” Jack agrees. He tries to sit up, and then discovers that he does not have a body. He considers that. Dismisses it as unimportant.

What is important is Ianto, who is now looking thoroughly displeased. Jack feels as if he is a puppy who has just soiled the carpet.

“I didn’t have any other choice,” he defends weakly.

“Humans,” Ianto repeats, but this time he sighs. Puppies will do what puppies will do. It’s in their natures. He makes a vague sort of gesture with his hand, and then dissolves into light.

Puppies, after all, can be trained.

The pinpricks of light take a long time to fade. Once they do, the darkness presses in on him again.

* * *

Jack wakes up to Gwen’s relieved face. He could swear that she was just kissing him. The initial interest has faded now, though, and he allows but does not reciprocate her desperate hug.

It is difficult, he thinks, to feel affection for one who only recently stood by while you were murdered. Condoned your murder.

For that matter, it is harder still to forgive Owen. He goes through the motions, knowing from experience that it is the only way to force reality into shape. Do something frequently enough and it becomes fact. Believe something and it becomes true. Disbelieve in something and sometimes that is all you need to ward it off, even if it is in fact real.

Disbelief, however, is not always sufficient. This is something Jack knows. Neither is belief always sufficient. This too is something Jack knows.

He holds Owen, lets him sob into his shoulder. This is a man who should have died three days prior, he thinks. Would have died gagging on bluebells. Suffocated to death with no external marks on him. Dead from the inside out.

He lets go of Owen, pats him on the back. Sends the team out for coffees. Gwen is reluctant, but he insists.

Alone in the Hub, he calls out Ianto’s name. There is no response, and Jack feels momentarily foolish.

Then he hears a familiar set of engines, and all else is lost to him.

As he races desperately towards the TARDIS, he smells bluebells on the wind.


	2. azaleas and yarrow

Ianto is watching him.

This much, Jack is certain of. He thought at first that he might be imagining it, because how could a faerie leave Earth, leave the place that nourishes it? But he keeps seeing light out of the corner of his eye, keeps catching the scent of bluebells.

The TARDIS does not register any other life-forms on board, but Jack nonetheless knows that Ianto is there. Watching.

Jack wonders what will happen if he follows through on any of his numerous flirtations.

It might be best, he decides, if he does not. This resolution is aided by the fact that there is no one around that he particularly wants to follow through with. Even his attraction to the Doctor has faded, dulled by time, a new body, a new personality, and the revelation that Jack had been abandoned. Not simply – not –

Jack’s mind shies away from the thought. Coltish, he thinks, liking the sound of the word. It makes him think of long legs with knobbly knees, a perpetually wide-eyed stare. A baby’s stare, agape at the world that has been inflicted on it.

Amniotic fluid. A much safer world, Jack thinks, than that which we must endure. What is it like in those terrifying moments, being forced out of your sanctuary into the world? This must be why we do not remember our births.

He has always known that the human mind is – resilient, that is the word, the word he always uses. In protecting itself, it forgets.

Sometimes, Jack thinks that forgetting is the only means of getting through life intact. But how much must he forget?

* * *

Time is a peculiar sort of construct. The breakdown. Hours, minutes, seconds. Days, weeks, months. So very precise. And yet, it is a system that is quite arbitrary. Is dependent on our position in this particular solar system at this particular point in history. On our speed as we careen around the sun, whirling dizzyingly through space.

And through it, time exists. The words do not matter. What matters is the flow. The rippling fabric. The then-now-thence. This is why a second can feel so long or so short. Time _pulls_.

It takes one second for Jack to die. One minute and twenty-seven seconds for him to come back to life. Ten seconds to focus enough to see the gun. One second to hear the bluebell screaming. One second to die. Again.

The Master lowers his gun and times how long it will take for Jack to come back this time.

* * *

Little things, at first.

Unlucky things. But little things. Barely enough to register.

Then bigger things.

It is Jack who understands before anyone else. Jack, chained up and separate from the rest of the ship, is nonetheless the one who understands. And so he laughs when the Master slowly, carefully, cuts his chest open, breaks his rib-cage and pulls it apart in a live autopsy. He laughs as his organs are prodded and the Master loses interest, leaving him to hang there with his innards falling out. He laughs when the guards are ordered to skewer him while the Master watches, spitting him for the fire.

He knows they think he is going insane. But he knows. He _knows_.

And the day the wind rips through the ship and flings his tormenters against the bulwarks, screaming bluebells and hurricane fury, so does everyone else.

* * *

“’Lo, Ianto,” Jack says tiredly.

“ _My_ Jack Harkness,” Ianto cries furiously.

“I don’t think he cares,” Jack says. He reaches out without thinking and runs his hand down Ianto’s cheek. Faerie, he tells himself. Not human. But Ianto feels warm and Jack’s hand trembles at the sensation. Touch. After so long.

“Mine,” Ianto repeats, and drags Jack into a vicious hug. It is arms and nails and teeth and Jack finds himself tumbled to the floor with Ianto climbing over onto into through him. Jack gives exactly what he gets, clinging to Ianto, desperate for contact. Skin on skin is what he needs now and what Ianto gives him.

Afterwards, Jack wonders what sort of pact he has entered into. Faust, he thinks. Goethe. And all the renditions thereafter. Jack knows that he is merely one in a long line. The knowledge does not stop the fear of what will come. His mind works feverishly, offering up any number of possibilities, each one worse than the next.

Ianto reaches over and pulls Jack into a bruising kiss. Bluebells bloom and die between their bodies.

Jack decides to stop thinking.

* * *

Jack returns to his body.

Ianto does not have the strength to hold him for long. Not for Jack, the faerie world. He gasps back to life, flailing in his manacles, feeling the bite of steel against his arms.

Steel. Iron. A more thorough prison than the Master knows.

The Master does not understand what has happened. Does not understand the windswept fury lashing the walls. Does not understand the ice creeping through his ship, the ice that refuses to melt despite bags of salt. The ice that watches. Waits.

And what the Master does not understand, he ignores or destroys. He cannot stop the ice and so he pretends it is not there. Pretends he does not care about it. Pretends it is not undermining his rule.

Takes it out on Jack.

Jack does not care. He _knows_.

And so he smiles.

* * *

Once upon a time, on a planet far, far away, there was a torture expert named –

Well. His true name is not important. There was once a torture expert – we shall call him… hm. Shane. It has a good sound. That shall be his name. Now, Shane was famous through the land for his ability to get information out of the most recalcitrant prisoners. Leave him alone in a room with the hardiest man, it was said, and within the half hour that man would have revealed everything Shane wanted to know and more besides.

Yes, Shane was famous. And his fame made him rich, for there was always work for such a skilled torture expert. But with riches come danger, and no one was more aware of the fact than Shane. He hid away his fortune in a secret place and never told a soul where it was. Countless people tried to trick the location out of him, but Shane always saw through their clumsy attempts. Shane hunted down these people and killed them. In that sense, it was a tad difficult to rob him.

But all it takes is one man. One lucky man.

And one unlucky day, for Shane.

After a brief but glorious battle – battles are always glorious, and let no one tell you otherwise – Shane found himself taken prisoner. Swiftly, he was spirited away. His men lay behind him dead and dying. Shane’s thoughts were not of them, but of what would become of him.

His own tricks were used against him. That, to Shane, was the most detestable thing. The techniques he had so lovingly crafted were bastardised for use on him. When his fingertips were cut off, he had to hold himself back from correcting their positioning. When his right calf was flayed, he resisted suggesting the liberal application of salt water. Why, he lamented to himself in those quiet moments he was allowed, these were nothing more than rank amateurs.

And being amateurs, one day a cut was made on Shane’s body that was a little too deep. A little too long. Unknown to his captors, Shane slowly bled to death in a cramped, dark cell.

The next morning, his dead body was the cause of much consternation. Shane’s death was premature. They had not gotten any information out of him. He had not given up his most prized secrets. They had not found the location of his hoard of riches.

There was only one hope for it. They would have to plunder all his known dwellings and search for a clue as to his secret ones.

Dead, Shane listened to these plans and felt his fury grow. He refused to let them desecrate his sanctuaries. But being dead, Shane’s ability to stop them was understandably limited. He therefore turned to those who could.

The next morning, Shane’s captors were themselves dead. The smell of roses chased them into the afterlife.

* * *

Jack wakes to silence. The dream lingers and for a moment he thinks he smells roses. Then the scent is replaced by bluebells and he smiles, as if at the young girl who has just entered.

“The usual, Tish?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says.

It is Tuesday, and Tish feeds Jack protein mush flavoured with mercuric oxide. He is allowed to wash it down with mercury.

It is a particularly difficult death.

* * *

The faeries, Jack recalls, are creatures of time. Does that mean they can sense his unnatural condition? Is Ianto fixated on him because Jack is a fact? Does he feel peculiar? Or does he feel wrong?

For that matter, what would a Time Lord feel like to a faerie, and vice versa?

Jack thinks of all the things Estelle thought of her faeries. The faeries that lived in her world were good, helpful creatures. Jack has always thought of them as being the opposite. But is that right, is that what they are? Is anything ever pure evil or pure good?

Taking Jasmine was an act of evil, surely. She was a child, could not have known the ramifications of what she was doing. But. But.

They never take those who remain attached to the human world.

Jack remembers the angry faerie voices. His men, in the train. The tunnel. The darkness. The overwhelming smell of roses.

“Harm ours, summon harm,” the chant he thought he heard. They protect their own.

Faeries twist human minds. Rework them into something malleable, something that accepts faeries as saviours and friends. They are not what Jack wants to be. And yet.

Different clans, he thinks. Perhaps Ianto is not like them. Bluebells and roses and the difference between madness and life. Perhaps Ianto is a faerie that Estelle might have liked to meet. Or at least is halfway there.

Estelle. What did she do? What did she do, save love them?

Jack remembers what he has read of the faeries. How they steal the substance of something. A cow, a goat, a baby. What is left behind is a shell that sickens and slowly dies an inexplicable death. Perhaps Estelle has been stolen, stolen away to the faerie world. She has always had the mind and curiosity of a child. Jack hopes that she is being treated well by them. There are stories of human women being stolen away to suckle faerie children. To shelter their babes and provide the care they are incapable of. Perhaps.

Wishful thinking, he tells himself.

* * *

Gwen’s hair has been lopped short.

It is a strange thing to focus on, Jack knows. But he cannot help himself. Her long, messy locks have been cropped close to her head now. A sheep after shearing. He wonders if it is something she did herself, or if it was done out of necessity, or if her captors did it for some inexplicable reason. It could be any of those reasons, or something else he hasn’t thought of.

He likes to think that the short hair is merely practical. That she cut it off herself so that it would not get in the way as she fought to survive.

“Jack,” she whispers in horror when she sees him.

He stares at her blankly.

“I’ll leave her here, shall I?” the Master says, smiling. “Let you catch up? Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be back soon and then we can play!”

Gwen flinches. No doubt she is imagining being raped, Jack thinks. But that is one indignity he has thus far been spared, and that he suspects Gwen will be spared as well. The Master is curiously asexual. Lucy is a physical toy. A doll to be paraded on his arm because that is what all leaders should have. He doubts that the Master has ever had sex with Lucy.

Sometimes, Jack thinks that it is because the Master is so in love with himself he cannot be aroused by anyone else.

“Jack,” Gwen says again once the Master has left. She reaches out instinctively, her arms pulled up short by the chains holding her to the wall.

He blinks slowly, lazily. Perhaps he should say something.

“Jack,” Gwen says. “God, please, say something.” She waits, and when no reply is forthcoming, her face crumbles. “What has he done to you?”

Jack thinks. The list is long, and he has lost track a while ago. He remembers the more interesting deaths, but a lot of them blur together in his mind. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, shifting slightly.

Gwen lights up when he speaks. “Oh, Jack,” she says. “It’s been horrible on Earth. All the things he’s doing –”

“I don’t know what’s been happening,” Jack says. “It’s a bit hard getting the news here.”

Gwen bites her lip. “The Hub was destroyed,” she says. “Along with most of Cardiff, in the first strike.”

“The team?” Jack asks.

“We split up,” Gwen says. “And we lost contact a while ago. I don’t know what’s happened to them.”

“So,” Jack says. “What brings a lovely lady like you to a place like this?”

Gwen smiles tremulously. “I was trying to help get some food for a refugee camp,” she says. “The soldiers caught me. I thought they were going to kill me at first, but they brought me here.”

“He knows you’re Torchwood,” Jack says. The Master will probably kill her in front of him. No, not just kill. He will likely torture her. Kill her slowly. And make Jack watch every moment of it. He has done it before, tortured children in front of Jack, delighting in Jack’s helplessness in the face of his cruelty. And knowing that he has one of Jack’s team here, he will surely find heretofore unknown depths of creativity.

Jack does not tell Gwen this. The anticipation is just as debilitating as the torture.

“Jack,” Gwen says urgently, her voice dropping. “There are bluebells everywhere. We find them in the camps, near places where there’s food and water, like signals.”

He stares at her. She takes this as a signal to continue. “And helping us,” she says. “Sometimes there’s a wind pushing away the Toclafane. Not always, but often enough to not be a coincidence. And it always smells of bluebells.”

Jack is not entirely sure what to say. There are reasons. There are surely reasons. He can think of plenty. But his mind is frozen on her words. There are bluebells everywhere.

The Master brings in a large water tank for Gwen. She is dropped into it, chained to the sides. Then the tank is filled with water. Jack watches as the level slowly rises, as Gwen frantically grasps the chains, trying to find a way to break free. The water reaches her waist. Her chest. Her neck. Her nose. She stands on the tips of her toes, desperate for air.

And then the water stops. If she stays on her toes, she can breathe. If she drops even slightly, she will breathe water.

So this is what he’s doing, Jack thinks. Waiting to see how long she will last before falling. He knows what it is like for your legs to give way without permission. He knows the limits to which the human body will push itself if there is even the slightest possibility of survival. And Gwen has never been one to stop fighting.

She lasts two days.

When she finally drowns, Jack remembers a story he read once, about the woman of Llyn-Y-Fan. A children’s tale, which like all children’s tales has a kernel of awfulness at its core. He remembers how the story ended.

_As moontime and owl-light took over the land they reached the lake, and a wondrous sight it must have been to see them splashing into the water, their backs flaked with quicksilver, and the lake healing over them, and the ripples forgetting the place, till of all that host of creatures not a trace remained save the furrow scraped by the plough the four oxen drew, and the hoofmarks in the dust of the road._

* * *

Y Tylwyth Teg. In all his reading, this is the name that Jack keeps coming back to. Perhaps because he has lived so long in Wales. Estelle once mentioned wanting to travel to Llyn y Fan Fach. Before she had the chance, the cancer took away her strength and savings. Instead, she devoted the rest of her life to finding the faeries. Believing in the lovely maiden of Esgair Llaethdy, thrice-struck and forever lost.

He once told Estelle that the maiden had had a fine pre-nuptial agreement. She’d laughed and called him a terrible sceptic.

Now, he thinks once again that he was right. For the faeries are crafty and the spirit world cannot be trusted.

Tish brings him his dinner. It is a flavourless, opaque soup of some sort. As she feeds him, he wonders if it is poisoned.

At the bottom of the bowl, Tish is surprised to find a whole bluebell. Jack is not.

He gets Tish to feed him the bluebell.

* * *

Of all things, it is the standing that is the worst. That, and the fact that he is only allowed ten minutes a day to use the washroom. He is not allowed to shower. His hands remain manacled at all times. And save for those ten minutes, he is standing, standing, standing.

Jack’s legs ache in despair. His wrists are chafed where he sags against his restraints helplessly. His thighs collapse and his body falls. Upright. He can taste dirt and sweat and blood in his mouth.

On Wednesday, he is fed actual meat. Afterwards, he finds out that it was a portion of his own liver, removed the previous day. He remembers the Master blindly rooting in his abdomen, pulling his guts out at random for inspection. Troops all lined up, boots polished, hats settled.

He does not have the energy to throw up. It is part of him anyway, he thinks morbidly.

* * *

Today is a special day. Today, Jack is being brought outside.

His arms and legs are bound in chain, with just enough room left for him to walk. The weight keeps pulling him down and the guards keep pulling him forward and so he walks in a curiously listing manner, always falling, always angled, a hypotenuse.

He is not surprised when he sees Toshiko and Owen. They kneel, guns to the backs of their heads, looking defiant.

“A rescue attempt, would you believe it?” the Master laughs. “Oh, such darlings you have working for you, freak!”

Jack meets their eyes but does not speak. Toshiko cannot quite hide her horror when she sees him. Owen looks like he did when he found out the truth about Katie’s death.

“Can’t have them taking away my favourite toy, can I?” the Master asks. Toshiko’s eyes turn hard. Jack has never seen them quite so cold before. He thinks of the mountains. Snowdon. Or Mount Fuji. It seems more appropriate. What has happened to put that glacial look in her eyes?

The Master tortures Jack in front of Toshiko and Owen. Kills him a few times. This is nothing new. New is when he tells Toshiko to slit Jack’s throat. She takes the knife in trembling hands, and then, quickly, stabs it into her own throat. Her lifeblood fountains over Jack’s face.

She smiles when she dies. Jack looks to Owen, who meets his gaze implacably.

The Master does not make the same mistake twice. Strangle Jack and you will live another day, Owen is told.

He refuses.

It takes Owen fifteen hours to succumb to the wounds. Jack watches as his once-medic is reduced to a filthy, pleading, grovelling mess. The Master, he has to admit, is rather skilled at torture. He might even be better than Jack himself.

It ends with a bullet to Jack’s head. When he wakes up, he is back in his manacles again.

The bodies, he is told, have been tossed off the ship.

He wonders how far the body parts will scatter, once they hit the ground.

* * *

Every time he wakes into life, he smells bluebells. He knows he is imagining the delicate scent, because no one else can smell it. Nevertheless, the smell hangs thick in his nose. He is glad for it. It masks the smell of death and pain that cling perpetually to him now.

He thinks of Ianto. Of those deceptive human eyes and body. Of their last time together, all frantic and demanding, Ianto deep in him, _yesyesyesharderdammit_ , like they were melding one into the other and Ianto was taking over completely, possessing him, dominating him. Jack had not known how much he had needed that. Needed to be possessed by someone other than the Master.

With Ianto, he can feign importance.

Such a dangerous road to tread, and yet he cannot help himself. What would it be like?

* * *

Norrmalmstorg, Sweden. 23rd August 1973. Six days and a few songs later, a new phenomenon is born. Jack has read extensively about it. It was once part of his trade. When he lived through the time period, he travelled to Sweden to watch the drama unfold. He knew what would happen, but was still surprised at the vehemence with which the hostages defended their captors.

They claim to have been more afraid of the police. This, Jack thinks, is not entirely surprising depending on the part of the universe you are in. All the same, for him, it has never been a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. Caught between two impossibilities, Jack has always found a way to create a third path. An escape route. He has never yet been caught without one.

He has, however, grown skilled at creating that situation for others.

The two key ingredients are these. First, isolation from the outside world. Keep them dependent on you for information and they will come to rely on you for everything else. And second, kindness. This can be as simple as a lack of abuse. Or a break from the abuse.

Jack ponders this. He is certainly isolated. He is also certainly not shown any kindness by the Master. No, no danger for him here, even if he were not aware of the possible traps laid down for him.

Bluebells, he thinks to himself, don’t bluebells mean kindness?

* * *

Ianto steals him away once more, and only once.

This time Jack spends a few hours slowly kissing and tasting every inch of Ianto’s body. Ianto allows it. Encourages him, guides his hands and mouth around. Jack can feel himself sinking further into bluebells and song, can feel Ianto’s grasp tightening around him. The past ten months have robbed him of his ability to care.

And he wants to make it right. He has wanted to make it right for a long time now, even before the Master. But now the want is a need and so he lavishes attention on Ianto’s body. On his human skin and human flesh. On the peculiar bumps below his shoulder blades.

“Show me what you really look like,” he says.

“Like this,” Ianto says. Jack smiles and licks the whorl of Ianto’s ear.

“Don’t you believe me?” Ianto asks.

“You’re talking a lot more like people in my time now,” Jack observes.

“I’ve been listening,” Ianto says, smiling proudly.

Jack kisses the tip of his nose. “And doing very well.” He sinks back on his heels, buries his nose in the crook of Ianto’s thigh and hip.

“I know,” Ianto says complacently. He watches as Jack kisses a line down his inner thigh.

“How does this body work?” Jack asks.

Ianto smirks. “Well,” he says. “The blood flow to the penis increases and –”

He is cut off with a firm kiss. It lasts all of two seconds before they are both laughing into each other’s mouths, all teeth and lips and tongues, sliding against each other till they come, flushed and sated.

“I look different,” Ianto says quietly.

“Thought you might,” Jack says.

“This body is easier,” Ianto says. “But so funny!” He wriggles his toes. “How do you humans stand it?”

Jack smiles crookedly. “Used to it, I guess. Do you miss your other body, when you’re in this?”

Ianto shrugs. “I miss flying,” he says. “I miss breathing.”

What, Jack wonders, does that mean? Instead of asking, he pressed his lips to Ianto’s neck and breathes deeply. Bluebells, of course. What else would Ianto smell of?

“Not long now,” Ianto says, and Jack nods against Ianto’s skin. Already he can feel the ghostly weight of iron around his wrists. The same iron that impedes Ianto’s magick. He sighs a kiss against Ianto’s collarbone and closes his eyes.

He flails alive again, back on board the _Valiant_.

* * *

Poisoned (dimethylmercury, arsenic, bromide, succinylcholine, tetradotoxin, batrachotoxin, sarin, polonium).

Dismembered, flayed, roasted, defenestrated (and wasn’t _that_ fun?).

Shot, strangled, stabbed, starved, suffocated.

Electrocuted, frozen, burned, beatenbrokenbruised.

Ground glass in his food and baths of acid.

And Jack is so very tired.

* * *

It ends.

Jack imagines that Ianto can feel time stretching, distorting, folding back on itself. The loom, reset. Threads frayed and snapped. Do-over, he thinks. He has finally gotten his do-over. Does it count when he still remembers?

Cleaning up. Mopping up the mess the kids have made, after the party has ended. It has been a year-long birthday party and the birthday boy is no more. Jack is glad for it.

They Retcon the memories of those left aboard the _Valiant_. For the most part, they were unwilling accomplices. But there is one guard who enjoyed helping the Master. Enjoyed stoking the fire beneath Jack’s feet to slowly boil him to death. Enjoyed carving patterns into his skin while the Master watched to see how long it would take for the blood loss to kill him.

Jack stabs him. Gouges out his eyes. The knife, in, in, in, and Jack does not know if he is crying or screaming or both.

The Doctor is aghast. Jack does not care.

Inside the TARDIS, a bluebell breeze follows Jack wherever he goes. A subtle shifting of the air. He suspects that the Doctor and Martha do not realise that they are not alone. He takes comfort in the warm brush of shiftless, ageless presence in his hair, on his cheek, the back of his hand.

The bluebells become his refuge. He avoids his other two companions. They cannot understand what it was like for him. Cannot understand the constant immensity taking away his air. He retreats to his room, inhales bluebells and reacquaints himself with a bed. With a lavatory. With a bath. With soft, cotton sheets. With lying down. He is so sick of standing.

Slowly, the simmering panic begins to recede.

It takes a while, but Jack eventually feels like he can breathe again.

* * *

“Doctor?” Jack asks.

The Doctor runs around, checking various readings. Jack thinks that he might be able to make sense of at least some of it if he focused, but he does not want to. Near him, Martha is watching the Doctor work. She is sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest. Like Jack, she appreciates the luxury of sitting or lying down.

“Yes?” the Doctor says distractedly.

“Ever met a faerie?” Jack asks.

The Doctor pauses in his frenetic work. “Well, really!” he says, blinking owlishly. “You’re the last person I’d accuse of using such derogatory language, Jack!”

Jack pauses, rewinds. “I meant real faeries,” he says dryly. “As in, supposed mythology. What do you know about them?”

“Oh, them,” the Doctor says, and goes right back to his work. “Not much.”

“Are they real?” Martha asks. “I mean, actual faeries. Are they aliens, or some such?”

“No,” Jack says. “They’re not aliens.”

“Some sort of creatures here on Earth,” the Doctor says. “Supposedly, anyway.”

“You don’t know anything about them?” Jack asks. “Culture, society, what they like to do, any of that?”

The Doctor shakes his head, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. “No, no,” he says. “I’ve never seen them. Who knows if they even exist?”

Jack looks away. “They do,” he says.

“Yeah?” Martha asks. “Have you met them?”

Jack smiles. “Some,” he says.

“So are they like in the stories?” Martha, again. The Doctor knows better than to ask.

“They’re not all good,” Jack says. “I used to have arguments about them with – someone. She thought they were good. I thought they were bad. We were never able to agree, not until just before she died. Before they killed her.”

Martha’s eyes are wide and her mouth is making a silent ‘oh,’ late-night pantomime at the old theatre. “So they’re bad, then,” she says.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Jack says. “But they’re definitely not human. And definitely not understandable.”

A bluebell laugh, on the wind. Jack looks up at nothing and smiles.

* * *

“Jack,” the Doctor says. “Why were you asking about faeries earlier?”

Jack looks out over the Plass. He has nearly forgotten what it looked like. The sunlight is warm, the Cardiff weather obliging him with a moment of perfection. No doubt it will rain tonight, but for now, Jack will enjoy this brief respite.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Ianto asks, leaning against the railing beside them. Jack turns and smiles broadly at him.

“Stop it,” the Doctor mutters under his breath.

“Should be off now,” Jack says. He salutes casually and winks at them, before interlacing his fingers with Ianto’s.

“Jack,” the Doctor says, glancing strangely at their joined hands. “My question?”

Jack shrugs. “It’s nothing important,” he says.

“Aren’t I?” Ianto asks archly.

“Unless you also want him for a toy,” Jack says, turning his eyes on Ianto.

“No,” Ianto decides. “I’ll just play with you.” His smile is predatory. Jack thinks that he might die tonight, might choke on bluebell petals and gasp back to life tasting sweet nectar at the back of his neck. The thought does not bother him. It is an easier death than the multitudes the Master has inflicted on him.

“Wait,” the Doctor says, outright gaping for the first time in Jack’s memory. “Are you saying –”

Ianto leans in, bites Jack’s neck, and vanishes into the wind.

Jack shrugs. Touches the small swell of blood on his neck. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Bye, Martha. Doctor.” He turns and sets off towards the Tourist Information Centre, feeling the Doctor’s eyes burning into his back.

He raises one hand in farewell, then turns his mind to the future.


	3. irises and dandelions

Jack returns to an empty Hub.

This suits him. He has forgotten his password and resorts to the override on his wristband to get inside. Once safely within, he wanders the corridors, trying to remember them. Ianto paces silently at his side, content for now to watch.

Jack’s feet carry him to his office. Little has changed in his absence. Four months, he thinks. He wishes the Doctor could have brought him back closer to when he left, but the instability of the Rift made controlling the landing impossible. In retrospect, he thinks that he should have simply asked the Doctor to land somewhere else, somewhere far enough that the Rift could not have interfered. He could have caught a flight back. It is something to remember, if ever this occurs again. He does not rule out the possibility.

“Are you going back to him?” Ianto asks, pouting.

“I’ll help if he asks me to,” Jack says. He does not comment on the fact that Ianto has seemingly responded to his thoughts.

“What if I don’t want you to?” Ianto says. The little-boy pout has vanished and he has a crafty look in his eyes. Jack’s heart stammers a broken sentence. He cannot make out the words.

“It depends on what he wants,” Jack says. “If it’s to save the world – well, that _is_ my job.”

Ianto laughs and Jack relaxes. That was the correct answer, he thinks. For now.

Jack walks routes he has forgotten in the wake of pain and death and pain and death. He logs into Toshiko’s computer in search of his errant team. They have all gone out on a suspected alien sighting. It should not take them more than a few hours, and then they will return. Jack wonders what he should say to them. What he can possibly say. He wonders how they will react. With guilt, thinking that their actions had driven him off? Or with anger at his abandoning them with no word? It is likely to be the latter, he thinks. His team has always preferred to react with anger.

“I should have broken him,” Ianto says darkly.

“Don’t,” Jack says. “He’s a good doctor.”

“He hurt you,” Ianto says. “Shot you. Made you dead.”

Jack smiles at that turn of phrase. Ianto sounds so much like a child at times. “Yeah, he did,” he says. “But he’s still a good doctor. And somehow, I don’t think he’ll try it again.”

Ianto’s head tilts to one side. Jack thinks of a bird. A red kite, watching. Once, a long time ago, he had climbed Snowdon in search of a supposed alien artefact that had landed there. He had found no trace of the artefact, but he _had_ come across a nesting red kite. It had peered at him with large eyes, ruffling its black-streaked feathers. Its tail was forked as a serpent’s tongue. Jack had backed away slowly, unwilling to disturb it and unwilling to take his eyes away from it.

It had not been a particularly majestic bird, but it had completely captivated him.

A year later, Jack had returned to Snowdon. Or Yr Wyddfa, as the locals insisted on calling it. He supposed it was only good manners to call the mountain by its local name. In any case, he had gone for pleasure that second time, not business. He had climbed the mountain once more, looking for red kites.

He had found none.

“Can you fly?” Jack asks.

“Sometimes,” Ianto says. It is more of an answer than Jack was expecting.

“Do you like it?” Jack asks.

A small smile. “Sometimes,” Ianto replies.

Jack smiles back. He should have expected that. It nearly surprises him that he did not. Nearly, because he has learned by now never to be surprised by the faeries.

The trick, Jack thinks, is to always be surprised.

* * *

John Hart reaches out to push Jack off the building. He is intercepted by an angry young man in a fitted suit.

“What, you’ve got another one on the team?” John asks, stepping back and away from Ianto. Jack smirks at the thought of being able to back out of faerie reach.

“He’s not quite a team member,” Jack says. “I’m beginning to think he should be, though.”

“I’d rather not,” Ianto says, glaring at John.

“So you just want to be his bodyguard then?” John asks. Jack notes the minute twitch of his left eyebrow that means he is thinking. Recalibrating his plans. He still hasn’t learned to hide his tells, Jack thinks. Unless he is faking it, in which case, he is trying to throw Jack off. Of course, Jack has never seen fit to tell John about his miniscule give-away, and so it is far more likely that John does not know it exists.

“He’s mine,” Ianto declares petulantly.

“He’s right,” Jack says. “I’m his. All that you were saying, John? The stars, out there for the taking? I don’t want them. This is where I’m staying.”

“For eye-candy there?” John asks, arching one perfect eyebrow in disbelief.

“He’s so much more than that,” Jack laughs. A strong wind gusts around them, rocking John back on his feet. “Now, then. Why don’t you tell us exactly why you’re here, John?”

The team is not surprised to see Jack bring John back into the Hub at gun-point. They are, however, surprised to see Ianto follow them in.

“Tell me he’s not another partner,” Owen demands.

“What, they don’t know about eye-candy there?” John drawls, sounding remarkably composed for someone with a gun to his back. Jack realises abruptly that John still has a card up his sleeve. Time will tell what the card is.

Time. Peculiar that he should choose that particular phrase.

“They know of him,” Jack says. “They just haven’t had a face to put to him yet.”

“Faces,” Ianto says thoughtfully. “Strange things, these faces.”

“I’m sure you could change it out if you like,” Jack says. He cuffs John to the chair and briskly frisks him for any more weapons. Just in case. It pays off, when he finds the gun tucked against John’s back.

“And fashion another body?” Ianto asks. “I’ll stick with this.”

“What’s he talking about?” Gwen asks nervously. “And who is he?”

“Later,” Jack says. He reaches under John’s shirt and fastens something to his chest without letting anyone see what it is. Then he stands back and crosses his arms. “Start talking.”

“Wouldn’t hurt an old friend now, would you, Jack?” John says, smirking up at Jack.

Jack smiles back, then very deliberately raises his wristband so John can see it. The fear painted on John’s face escapes no one, as Jack presses first one, then another button. His finger hovers over another button.

“Yes or no, John?” he asks pleasantly.

“You wouldn’t,” John says in a low voice.

Jack presses the button.

His team’s screams blend with John’s. Jack lets it go on for ten seconds before pressing the button again.

“Jack!” Owen yells, clattering down the stairs. He hits an invisible wall of wind and gets no further. “What the fuck was that for?!”

“Lessons learned,” Jack says. “This is faster. And he knows something I want.”

Ianto laughs, and Jack smiles at him briefly.

“You bastard,” John gasps.

“Talk and it stops,” Jack says. “I’ll tell you now that after the fifth application, I’ll get creative. And believe me, I’ve had lots of inspiration recently.”

“Money, all right?” John spits.

Money is what it comes down to. Money is why John shot Owen, poisoned Gwen and tried to kill Jack. To add insult to injury, Jack finds that John’s treasure map has in fact led him to a bomb.

“That bitch!” John shrieks upon realising he has been played.

“Crazy exes,” Jack agrees, shaking his head. Ianto laughs as John stares at the bomb attached to him in terror. Jack watches as Ianto savours the fear for a few moments, then touches the bomb. It falls neatly into his hand.

“Do you want to keep it?” Jack asks.

Ianto tosses it casually. “Not me,” he says. “The others might like to play with it.” He leans forward, as if imparting a secret. “They’re quite childish sometimes.”

Jack laughs. “In contrast to you,” he says playfully.

“Oh, yes,” Ianto says earnestly. “I’m not interested in silly toys like that. You’re the best toy there is.”

“And if they think that too?” Jack asks impulsively. Toshiko inhales sharply, and even John looks bewildered.

Ianto’s eyes darken to bluebells. “You’re mine,” he hisses sharply. “They’re not allowed to have you.”

Jack considers that for a moment. “Promise me that?” he says.

Ianto smiles slyly and presents Jack with a bluebell out of thin air. Gwen swallows a shriek and backs up straight into Owen, who steadies her with a hand on her back. “Primrose promise,” Ianto says.

Jack swallows, accepting the bluebell. “Evening primrose?” he asks.

“You’re smart,” Ianto says, patting Jack’s arm condescendingly.

“Occasionally,” Jack says. He looks at John. “So, what to do with you.”

“What,” John says, staring between Jack and Ianto. “Is going on with the two of you?”

“Not any of your business,” Jack says. “All right. We’ve handled why you’re here. Now I want something else from you.”

John slouches in his chair. “I don’t have anything else,” he says sullenly. “I came here for the diamond. Nothing else.”

“Maybe,” Jack concedes. “But you know something else. Something to do with me.” He pauses, then raises his arm significantly. “The nerve trigger’s still connected, Johnnie-boy.”

Jack uses the torture device three more times before pausing so that John can take a breather. Ianto keeps the other three frozen in place to prevent them from interfering. No doubt, Jack thinks, they are aghast at this side of their leader. This side they have never seen because Jack has always been careful to shield them from it. He is a better man now than he once was, but this – this has always been a necessary evil at times.

It hardly matters. He will Retcon them before sending them on home. They will remember John, but nothing after arriving back at base. It will be easy enough to blame everything on John, and to claim that John had killed him instead of Retconning him. Jealous exes, after all.

John is a bobble-head doll with faulty innards, barely keeping his head on. His ragged breaths sound painful, but Jack does not feel pity for him.

He waits until he is sure that the ringing has cleared from John’s ears. Then he speaks. “One more,” he says pleasantly. “Remember, after that? I get creative. I could do the artwork thing.” He taps his chin thoughtfully. “Always thought I’d make a good artist.”

“Painting in blood?” Ianto asks interestedly.

“It’s painting on skin, really,” Jack corrects. “Either with a blowtorch or a knife. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“I –” John says, then stops to cough. Jack patiently waits until the coughing fit ends. John looks up at him, eyes blazing with anger. “I found Grey.”

Jack’s face closes down. “You what,” he says.

“I found Grey,” John snarls. “Thought you might like him back.”

“And how is he doing?” Jack enquires, leaning against a table.

“Fuck off,” John says. Jack eyes him for a while, his body perfectly still. Ianto amuses himself by gusting the papers off the table and setting them to dance around John in a parody of a faerie dance.

Then Jack nods decisively and heads for the medical bay. Owen fights uselessly against the pressure holding him in place. Ianto looks directly at him and smirks.

Jack returns with a syringe. John’s eyes roll as Jack approaches.

“Still haven’t gotten over that fear of needles?” Jack asks, smiling. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit.”

The syringe contains a partial dose of liquid Retcon, just enough to erase John’s memories of being tortured. Jack could have kept it up and gotten the information from John that way, but there is no point in making enemies when there are easier methods.

Ianto helps by holding John’s arm down. Jack thanks him with a kiss, which grows steadily more heated as they wait for the drug to take effect. It is not long before John falls asleep. There is something perverse, Jack thinks delightedly, about making out with Ianto in front of John and his team while they are literally held captive.

Ianto laughs into his mouth, then bites Jack’s tongue, drawing blood. Evidently, Ianto is also amused by the idea.

When John starts to stir, Jack reluctantly pulls away from Ianto and re-settles his clothes. Ianto sinks against his side, nuzzling his neck, and Jack cannot help but curl an arm around him and pull him closer. It is to this sight that John wakes up.

“What –?” he asks groggily. Then he comes more fully awake and pulls against the restraints holding him in place. “Whoa, Jack. Kinky much?”

Jack smirks. “Just taking a few precautions,” he says.

John pouts attractively. “So you don’t want to have wild sex now?” he asks. “We could invite the rest of your team. Eye-candy, too.”

Jack kisses the side of Ianto’s head. “Ianto doesn’t share,” he says.

“Kept man?” John asks mockingly.

“Very much so,” Jack agrees. Ianto smiles against his neck. John gives Jack a disbelieving look.

“So,” Jack says. “Found out what you were after. And you should be extremely glad we were here, because you would have died otherwise.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, smiling. Ianto produces the bomb out of nowhere and tosses it onto the table near John. John refuses to track its path until Jack nods to it. Then he reluctantly looks at it.

“Biological bomb, pretty much,” Jack says. “Latches on to the specified DNA and then, ten minutes later? Boom. You really shouldn’t kill your exes, you know. Some of them are just smart enough to know exactly how to get revenge.”

“What?” John asks in disbelief.

“Your ex,” Jack explains patiently. “No Arcadian diamond, John. It was all just bait to get you to find this bomb. To kill you.”

John utters a few words that have not yet been invented.

“I don’t think that’s anatomically possible,” Jack says. “Unless you were talking about a Hkemvert, maybe. Not too many bones, those guys.”

John glowers mutely at the bomb.

“So,” Jack says. “You know what this means.”

John rolls his eyes. “God, this is just bloody perfect,” he grumbles. “I was supposed to retire on this thing!”

Jack smirks. “You think?” he says. “Maybe you should have spent it on murder rehab.”

“Never works,” John says. “I’ve been twice.”

“Not going to the right people, obviously,” Jack says. “I’ve got a question for you now. What is it you know?”

John shrugs as best he can while strapped down. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain.” He imbues the last word with as much innuendo as Jack on a good day.

“Really,” Jack says sceptically. “Remember those two weeks, John?”

“Five years,” John says with a smirk.

“Long enough to learn you,” Jack says.

“Wish I could say the same,” John mutters.

“What are you hiding from me?” Jack asks. “It’s something to do with me, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, okay,” John says, sighing. “I was hoping to do this at a better time, you know?”

“Do what?” Jack says.

“Don’t panic, okay?” John says. “But I found Grey.”

Jack’s eyes widen in a convincing simulation of surprise. “You what?” he gasps.

“Yeah, only he’s not doing so hot,” John says.

“Is he hurt?” Jack asks, his eyes darkening with distress. Ianto lifts his head.

“Not physically,” John says. “Those people that kidnapped him… look, they did a number on him before he finally escaped, right? And, well, he blames you. Grew up blaming you for him getting kidnapped. I know what you were like when you joined the Time Agency, using every trick in the book to try and find him, and I know it wasn’t your fault. So I’ve been trying to talk to him, talk him out of… getting revenge on you.”

“He wants revenge?” Jack whispers, no longer feigning grief. Ianto straightens, pulling back enough to study Jack’s face. “On me?”

“He’s not thinking straight, I guess,” John says. “Wants to kill you. Actually, wants to wipe out anything that’s important to you and then kill you.”

“Details?” Jack asks hoarsely. Ianto is rigid next to him. Jack cannot spare the energy to think about how he will pay for this later.

John hesitates. “Nothing specific yet,” he says. “He doesn’t know enough just yet. But look, he was there when I found you, so he knows you’ve been staying here for a while. While means he’ll probably try and attack the city at least. If he finds out about your merry band here, he’ll probably go after them too. You’ll be last.”

“I see,” Jack says.

“It’s what he’s been talking about,” John says. “But that’s the craziness talking, right? You’re his big brother, he’ll come around.”

Ianto licks his lips thoughtfully. Jack does not look at him.

“I’ve been telling him about how you used to hack into the secure systems to search for him,” John goes on. “All that stuff. He’ll see it wasn’t your fault.”

For a brief moment, Jack allows himself to believe that. Then he smiles a terrible parody of a smile.

“Murder rehab,” he says. “Never works.”

* * *

Grey greets Jack with a knife to the gut. This, Jack thinks, was both what he expected and yet not. Ianto watches as Grey smiles, watches as the smile falters, watches as Jack pulls away the syringe and staggers back, holding his side.

Jack knows that this wound means he will bleed out slowly. He wonders absently if he has used enough sedative to keep Grey knocked out until he comes back to life.

Ianto looks at him with unreadable bluebell eyes.

Then Jack tastes bluebells at the back of his throat, and he falls thankfully into the quick death.

He gasps alive to find Ianto bending over Grey.

“Ianto?” he asks, coughing up petals even as he pulls himself to his feet.

“He’s still here,” Ianto says, not looking up. He is crouched, child-like, by Grey’s shoulders, peering down at his face.

“Still out?” Jack asks, and checks for himself before Ianto can say anything. Grey is still quite unconscious.

“Shall I wear his face?” Ianto asks in disgust.

Jack looks up in genuine surprise. “What?”

“Shall I wear his face?” Ianto asks. “Will you like me better then?”

Jack very nearly swallows his tongue. “I’ve – never been into incest,” he says cautiously. “And I quite like your face the way it is.”

Ianto stands up abruptly and kicks Grey in the neck like a child kicking a pebble. Jack flinches.

“You like him more,” Ianto accuses.

“I don’t,” Jack says. “He’s half-right. It was my fault. I let go of his hand.” He tries desperately to remember what he can of that terrible day, willing Ianto to see it and understand.

Understand. Is he honestly seeking understanding from a faerie?

“Humans,” Ianto says contemptuously. “And your _guilt_.”

“Yes,” Jack breathes. “But that’s all it is. It doesn’t mean I like him more than you.”

“Do you like me?” Ianto demands.

A half-smile plays across Jack’s lips. “Oh, yes.”

Ianto studies him for a while, then reluctantly relaxes. “I will take him away,” he says, looking back down at Grey.

“Will it – will he be hurt?” Jack asks, swallowing hard. He had been planning on freezing Grey in cryogenic storage, but perhaps –

“I will give him to mine,” Ianto decides, and Jack abruptly realises that he has lost any chance of talking Ianto out of this course of action. “He will work for us.”

“But he won’t be mistreated,” Jack presses, desperate enough to risk everything.

“He will remain unharmed,” Ianto says stiffly.

“Thank you,” Jack says.

There is no outward sign of what has happened. Over the next few weeks, Jack knows, Grey will slowly sicken and eventually die. Or his shell will, since his substance has already crossed the realms into the faerie world. He will be taken care of there, but kept under control and unable to inflict harm on anyone else.

Jack thinks of what he has done for Grey. He has demonstrated that he loves Grey. He has placed Grey’s welfare above his trust in Ianto.

And tonight, he will pay for daring to do so.

* * *

It does not go as Jack expects it to.

Ianto is tender. Loving. He places Jack’s pleasure above his own. He gives Jack everything Jack wants. He is attentive, worshipful.

He is completely jealous.

“Am not,” Ianto says, pulling away abruptly.

“You are,” Jack says slowly, in wonder.

“What would I be jealous of?” Ianto scoffs. Jack rolls over to look at him. Ianto glares at his ceiling.

“Grey,” Jack says. “The fact that I love him.”

Ianto makes an inhuman sound, low in his throat. Jack ignores it. He is quite skilled at ignoring obvious warning signs.

“You’re jealous I love Grey and my team,” Jack says. “That even when I have problems with any of them I care enough to try and work things out with them.”

Ianto slides off the bed and paces away. His movements are jerky, as if he is longing to rip apart the body he wears and let his true nature show through. Jack wonders what it would look like. What Ianto might do to him. He can taste bluebell nectar slowly rising in his throat.

“You are, aren’t you?” Jack says, his voice choked. “Even though you don’t have to be. I love you too, you know. And yet you’re jealous of them.”

A sound like a cascading waterfall sings through Jack’s ears. It is the last thing he hears before his throat clogs up with bluebells and he loses all his breath and blackness descends in spots over his eyes.

Later, when he opens his eyes, it is to a single purple hyacinth lying next to him.

* * *

The team accepts what he tells them.

Jack is not surprised by their trust. It is a believable story. At his request, they put together a quick summary of everything they have encountered while he has been gone. They have managed, he realises, to hide his absence from anyone asking after him. It will make things easier on him. He leans back in his chair, listening as Toshiko describes a cluster of Weevil attacks. He thinks of bluebells and evening primroses.

It is easier than Jack thought it would be to fall back into his old patterns.

Often, when he is alone, Ianto will come to him. Most of the time, they have sex. Occasionally, Jack will tell Ianto something he would never tell anyone else.

Every time he does, Ianto smiles as if knowing what it has cost Jack to reveal himself.

They never speak of Jack’s accusations and Ianto’s reaction.

Jack falls back easily on his old persona when he interrogates Beth Halloran. His team’s reactions to his torture of John are fresh in his mind, and he does not want to alienate them any more than absolutely necessary. He therefore does not physically torture Beth, though he thinks that it would have been interesting to find out what could have possibly gotten through her shields. Mental and emotional intimidation, on the other hand, is more easily accepted. 

He cannot fathom why this is the case. Mental scars always take longer to heal than physical ones. Even with physical abuse, it is usually not the body but the mind that gives up. He remembers Toshiko’s unhappiness when, once upon a time, he had used Janet as bait. We wouldn’t do that to a human, she had said, so what makes it all right to treat a Weevil that way? Except she had been wrong, of course, because if it had been the only way, Jack would have used a human as bait with exactly as little remorse as he had felt for Janet.

They stop half of Great Britain from going up in smoke. Once the immediate threat is over, Jack allows the exhaustion and blood loss to hit him. Gwen and Beth manage, between them, to carry his limp body back to the SUV.

Jack resigns himself to bleeding out slowly in the backseat. Instead, he feels his throat fill. The air stops. When he gasps back to life, he is unsurprised to be spitting out bluebell petals.

“Jack?” Gwen asks. She is driving, and cannot see him clearly.

“I’m fine,” Jack says.

“Sure about that?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Jack says, closing his eyes. “Just thinking about what I’ll do to whoever decided to hide nuclear weapons here without telling me.”

“They’re going to regret it, aren’t they?” Gwen asks, amusement in her voice.

“If I get answers I don’t like,” Jack says. “Somebody’s gonna get spanked. And not in a good way.”

Gwen laughs incredulously. Beth does not. Jack wonders, absently, if his body absorbs bluebells into itself every time he comes back to life.

* * *

Jack knows that he cannot hide Ianto’s existence from his team for much longer. He suspects that they have forgotten about the faeries. That the knowledge has been suppressed by everything that has happened since. He can understand, in a way. Ianto is not a constant presence in their lives the way he is in Jack’s.

Eventually, they will find out. Jack wonders if he should control it. Inform them ahead of time. Or whether he should let things play out as they will.

He chooses the second option. It is easier to predict a person’s reactions when that person has no foreknowledge. He knows that this will allow him greater control over his team. And control is one of the things he craves.

In the end, it is Rhys who gives the game away. Rhys and Gwen. One taken hostage and one willingly giving up. Idiot, Jack thinks in despair. Not for the first time, he questions the wisdom of keeping her on the team. She keeps destroying his plans by going against his orders. Keeps forcing him to make up new ones on the spot. He does not like the feeling of being out of control, even if only for a second.

Jack weighs his options. Two men and one elsewhere. He is confident that he can take out the two, but does the last also have a gun? Things might prove more dangerous in that case. It would be safer to play along, to put himself between Toshiko and the immediate threat. But if he dies, it will take time to revive, and anything could happen in that time.

He hates not knowing the situation he will awaken to.

Ianto takes the decision out of his hands. All at once, the men start choking. The one who has Rhys lets go, and Rhys wastes no time in lurching out of the way. Jack steps out of hiding, lowering his gun. He recognises the sound. Recognises the faint smell on the air.

“Thank you,” he calls out.

“Jack?” Gwen exclaims.

Jack holsters his gun and unties Rhys. He is secure in the knowledge that even if the men manage to find the energy to fire their guns, the bullets will not hit their targets. Ianto, like all his kind, does not like the touch of metal. Especially iron. But unlike most of his kind, he is strong enough to overcome the instinctive weakness, at least for a time.

This is either terrifying or reassuring. Jack has not made up his mind on which.

“What’s going on?” Toshiko asks. The men’s violent hacking is impossible to ignore. Their flailing attempts at getting air into their lungs are comically pathetic.

“I’m with her,” Rhys says. “What the bloody hell is going on here?”

There is still more than a hint of suspicion and anger in his attitude towards Jack.

“Ianto?” Jack calls.

“You ought to be more careful,” Ianto says. Jack turns and sees him standing there in the shadows. Toshiko’s gun is instantly trained on him. Jack pushes her arms down.

“Stand down,” he says. “He’s not going to hurt us.”

Ianto turns a dispassionate eye on the men, who have collapsed. Their limbs are twitching in a last, desperate grasp at life. Jack watches as the movement ceases. He can pinpoint the moment when they all die. He has no doubt that the unseen watcher who gave him and Toshiko away is also dead.

“Thanks for the help,” he tells Ianto.

“Jack?” Toshiko hisses under her breath. “Who is he? What happened?”

Owen arrives with sedative and pulls up short at the tableau before him. “The hell?” he mutters.

“Get this guy sedated,” Jack orders him. Owen is clearly confused, but moves to do as he is told. The massive creature lows pitifully, but succumbs to the drug much faster than Jack expects it to. No doubt there is much to be explored about the physiology of this creature. In the meantime, though, there is work to be done.

“So,” Owen says, joining Toshiko. She is still holding her gun, refusing to put it away. At least, Jack thinks, she is no longer holding it on Ianto. “What happened?”

“Those guys just started choking on nothing,” Toshiko says. “And died. Jack? Was it poison or something?”

“Or something,” Jack agrees mildly. Ianto smiles and steps forward. Toshiko’s arms come up again and again, Jack pushes them down. This time, he adds a glare.

“Don’t,” he says.

“Who is he?” Gwen demands. She has, at some point, recovered her gun. Jack is annoyed to find that she is also aiming it at Ianto. “Was it him that killed those men?”

“Would those be the same men that were trying to kill Rhys?” Jack asks mockingly. Gwen’s aim falters for a moment.

“This is what you try so hard to protect?” Ianto asks patronisingly.

“They’re usually a little smarter,” Jack says. “But in their defence, it’s been a long time since they last saw you.”

“Really,” Ianto says, giving Jack a knowing look.

“Yes,” Jack insists. Ianto laughs, but does not give Jack away.

“Check their mouths, Gwen,” Jack says, and there is a tinge of derision in his voice.

“Their mouths?” she repeats, taking her eyes off Ianto.

“Their mouths,” Jack repeats. “Put the gun down and check their mouths.”

She reluctantly does so. Jack reflects that she is really being quite contrary. The stifled shriek when she finds the bluebells is revenge enough. For now.

“Jack?” she whispers in horror, petals falling from her fingers.

“Oh god,” Toshiko says, looking sick.

Jack looks at Rhys, who simply looks confused.

“Ianto’s a faerie,” Jack explains for Rhys’ benefit. “And before you say anything, I mean in the creature-from-myth sense, not the insulting-slang-for-a-homosexual sense.”

Ianto wriggles his fingers in Rhys’ direction. The expression on Rhys’ face morphs into one that says quite clearly that he is surrounded by crazy people.

“We need to figure out how to get this guy back to the Hub,” Jack muses, looking up at the massive creature sleeping beside them. “I don’t suppose you could help,” he adds, glancing over at Ianto.

“I could pick it up,” Ianto says, rolling his eyes. “But I think people would notice a giant space whale floating atop a hurricane, don’t you?”

“Considering the number of things people are willing to write off as figments of their imagination,” Jack mutters, but reluctantly concedes the point.

It is still Ianto, in the end, who finds their solution. Somehow, he manages to communicate with the creature which is, as it turns out, intelligent. Its bulk is a means of self-preservation, Ianto explains to Jack. It grows extra meat to protect its true inner body from predators. While it does hurt having that meat forcibly removed, the creature can regenerate infinitely. As long as it is willing to tolerate the pain, it can last until help arrives.

And it now knows that Jack is willing to help. It stops its defences producing more meat. As they wait and watch, the vast majority of the creature shrivels away, eventually leaving behind something that is only about half again Jack’s size. Large, but infinitely more easy to transport than what it had once been.

It is a little more difficult dealing with Rhys. Jack gives Gwen the amnesia pill and orders her to slip it to him. She does not know it, but this is a test, and her final chance.

She fails.

He Retcons them both.

* * *

“It would be easier,” he tells Ianto. “If I just worked alone. What do you think?”

Ianto trails a hand down Jack’s chest. “Mm. Not without me.”

“Of course not,” Jack says. “But I could create new lives for Tosh and Owen. Give them a start elsewhere. And stop wondering when they’ll turn on me too.” He does not quite believe what he is saying. He is frustrated now, frustrated and tired and angry that he has lost a team member to her own selfishness.

“You can’t trust them,” Ianto says solemnly. He reaches up and presses a thumb against Jack’s neck. Against his pulse-point. Then harder, thumb sliding upwards, choking him. Jack thinks of a lover he had once had, who had enjoyed this. The act itself had done nothing for Jack, but the trust – the trust implied in allowing it, that was different.

Jack is not sure if he dies or simply passes out. When he wakes up, Ianto is lying propped up on one arm, watching him.

“Do you want me to leave?” Ianto asks. “If you say yes, right now, I’ll leave. I won’t ever bother you or yours again. No consequences. My word on it.”

That brings Jack up short. Faerie bond, faerie promise. Ianto will not break this vow. Jack could be rid of him forever, and never pay the price. He and everyone dear to him would be safe. He will never see Ianto again.

“Do you want me to leave?” Ianto repeats, a hand splayed across the left side of Jack’s chest. Feeling his heart beating. Thumpthump. Thumpthump.

“No,” Jack says softly.

* * *

He thinks of the new lives he could give Toshiko and Owen. Something befitting their intelligence. He would need convincing stories to explain their lost years, especially in Toshiko’s case. UNIT will be watching. He is not still convinced that he should pursue this course of action. He is not certain that he can manage all the work on his own. He is not certain he wants to be rid of the two he has left.

Jack tries to think of what it will be like without them. He will have Ianto, it is true, but at the same time, something inside him rebels at the thought of losing Toshiko and Owen. Ianto, he knows, will not begrudge him his team. It is entirely his decision.

He remembers Owen asking him what he would do with Suzie. He remembers asking Owen for his opinion, and Owen’s response.

He is, after all, the leader.

Inexplicably, they lose two days of their memories. Toshiko is frustrated, searching desperately through the security systems in search of some fragment of information. Owen is unsettled and taking it out on Jack. He has been alternately deferential and combative since Gwen’s departure from the team. Combative is understandable, but deferential? Jack wonders if he suspects the fate Jack is contemplating for him.

Toshiko finds nothing. Afterwards, Ianto tells him about the creature he had destroyed. Trapped in time, amber-flied, lanced with wind and wrapped in bluebells.

Jack wishes he could remember seeing it. He kisses desire against Ianto’s neck. Ianto accepts the appreciative attention as his due.

* * *

Toshiko is mildly uneasy around Martha, despite knowing that Martha is new to UNIT and that Jack trusts her. Eventually, however, she warms up to the other girl as they try to figure out why there is so much alien life hidden behind the Pharm’s doors.

Jack stands by his office doors, watching the other three. Owen is flirting with Martha in front of Toshiko again.

“Think she’ll remember you?” Jack asks. Out of sight of the others, Ianto leans against the wall, inspecting his cufflinks.

“I’m hard to forget,” Ianto says.

Jack smiles. “You are, at that.”

Ianto smirks and straightens, picking up a sensor from Jack’s desk. The needle spins wildly the moment he comes into contact with it. Jack watches as it pinwheels in desperation, seeking clarity. For a moment, he sympathises with it.

Ianto arches an eyebrow and drops the sensor back on the desk. “Are you going to go to the Pharm?” he asks.

“Probably have to,” Jack says, looking back at his team. Martha is laughing over something on Toshiko’s screen while Owen appears to be complaining half-heartedly. He shifts slightly and manages to catch a glimpse. It looks like Owen’s jellied eels commercial.

“They’ll recognise you,” Ianto says.

“They’ve seen all of us at some point or other,” Jack says. “Except Toshiko, and she’s of more use manning the Hub.”

“I could go,” Ianto says.

Jack turns to face Ianto. “You sure?” he asks. “We don’t know what’s in there. If they know what you are, if they trap you in iron –”

“I’m not that weak,” Ianto says, smiling. “I’ll at least be able to get out and back home.”

Jack bites his lower lip, thinking it over. There is no reason he can think of to veto the idea. No reason other than that he wants Ianto safe. It is a laughable thought to have. As if anything could hurt a faerie.

“I can come back here immediately,” Ianto says persuasively. “They cannot hold light and wind. They cannot hold me.”

“Why are you asking me?” Jack asks suddenly. Permission? Is he honestly seeking Jack’s permission?

Ianto stills momentarily, then looks away. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. Jack’s innards do a strange little squirm at the light blush staining Ianto’s cheeks.

“We’d need a good pretext for you to go in,” Jack says. “Do they want, I don’t know, interns or something? Test subjects?”

Ianto smiles.

* * *

They do need test subjects. Ianto assures Jack that he can fake a blood sample contaminated with a disease of their choice. Owen, after recovering from his shock about sending Ianto in, suggests hepatitis. It will give Ianto a better chance of being selected as a test subject.

“Any ideas on how we can stay in contact?” Jack asks.

“Camera contacts?” Toshiko says.

“What now?” Martha asks.

“Sort of a spy camera in contact lenses,” Jack says. “Triggered by body heat. And we can write on the computer for you.”

“Wow,” Martha says. “And the signals can’t be intercepted?”

“Nope,” Jack says. “It’s a good idea.”

“Except I don’t have body heat,” Ianto points out. Everyone pauses.

“You’re warm to the touch,” Jack says.

“Sensory trick,” Ianto says. “It’s not actually heat.” Jack wants to ask what it actually is, but decides against doing so. “I could try generating it,” Ianto continues doubtfully.

“Give it a shot,” Jack says, shrugging. “If it works, it means you have an on-off button the rest of us don’t.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Owen asks as Toshiko goes over to Gwen’s old table. They had been trying to modify the lenses a few weeks ago and no one had bothered putting them back in the archives. Jack absently ponders the pros and cons of hiring an archivist.

“Think about it then,” Jack says. His contingency plan is to go in blind. He trusts that Ianto will be able to keep himself safe.

The contact lenses work. Toshiko sorts out Ianto’s cover story despite still looking ill at ease around him. Martha pulls Jack away from the others the first chance she gets.

“That’s the guy from last time, right?” she asks. “When you left the Doctor?”

“Yeah,” Jack says.

“Is he really a faerie?” Martha asks. “I know you said he was, but…”

“He is,” Jack says. “And before you say it, I’m positive he’s not alien. His kind is from Earth. They’re just not something we can understand.”

“He seems… human,” Martha says tentatively.

“Depends on your definition,” Jack says. “Anyway, this isn’t his real body. It’s just something he’s adopted so he can hang around without suspicion.”

“Interesting,” Martha says.

“It is,” Jack admits, glancing over at Ianto. Ianto is chatting to Owen, who looks reluctantly fascinated by whatever it is Ianto is saying.

“You like him, don’t you?” Martha asks.

“He’s brilliant,” Jack says, flashing a wide grin. “Say, Martha. Would you ever come work for Torchwood instead?”

“Don’t know,” Martha says. “If you need me, you know I’d come. But right now, I’m happy where I am.”

“Thought you’d say that,” Jack says. “Second question. Would Tish want to come work here?”

Martha gives him a sharp look. “She’s interested in what I do,” she finally says. “And I think we both know she can bear up well under pressure. But she doesn’t want to be in UNIT. Won’t tell me why.”

“Saxon used them,” Jack reveals. “A lot of the guards on the _Valiant_ were from UNIT. Being blackmailed, whatever. The whole place was run like an army camp. For everyone but Saxon, anyway.”

Martha bites her lips. “I didn’t know,” she says.

“’Course not,” Jack says. “And I don’t think Tish would care that you’re with UNIT now. A lot of those men were essentially good people whose families were in danger.”

“But she wouldn’t want to put herself back there,” Martha finishes softly. “Makes more sense now.” She smiles a very little at Jack. “Torchwood might be good for her.”

“Not yet, of course,” Jack says. “She’s barely out of school, and she deserves more time to figure out what she wants to do with herself. But tell her that if she wants it, there’s a job here for her. Maybe just archival work until she’s trained up for fieldwork… if she wants it.”

“I’ll tell her,” Martha says. “And if she decides she wants to join up, you make sure you look after her, Jack Harkness.”

“Of course,” Jack promises. “Now, then. Back to work.”

It is only much later that it occurs to him he has been trying to build up his team instead of getting rid of the remnants. So much for Retconning Toshiko and Owen.

* * *

So many theories combine space and time together. A fabric that weaves the two so completely that thinking of them as one or the other is impossible. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that so many theories depend on that one theory being true. Jack knows that in the 24th Century, this one theory is both proved and disproved. He does not expect to see this in action here and now, in the 21st Century.

“What’s going on?” Toshiko asks, startled.

“Try setting up a relay,” Jack says. “Actually, wait. Move, let me try something.”

He manages to hook up two systems. Then he adds a third, just in case. It takes a moment to separate the signals, and then he gets a clear picture from the two Iantos currently wandering the Pharm.

“What just happened?” Owen asks.

“Kensington’s Third Law of Temporal Dynamics,” Jack says absently.

“Say what?” Martha says.

“Never mind,” Jack says. “He’s basically in two places at once. So we’ve got two sets of images being relayed back. That’s why the system got confused.”

“Jack,” Toshiko says. “What’s all that?”

Jack turns his attention back to the screen. Ianto is standing perfectly still, not blinking even once as he takes in the alien creatures in their tanks. Takes in the cowering fear and agony written on their bodies.

Ianto turns and Jack sees Aaron Copley standing there, holding a gun on Ianto. He is backed up by several security teams. Jack lunges for the computer, types hurriedly.

_get back here_

A blink, and the second screen goes black. The camera now shows the Hub, the room they are in, and Jack as he runs to Ianto. “Is that what I think it was?” he asks.

“I will kill them,” Ianto says, and his voice is a chorus of voices. His eyes are bluebell blue all through. No whites.

“They were, weren’t they?” Jack asks grimly.

“Were what?” Martha asks. “Jack, you’re not making any sense.”

“Those aliens,” Jack says. “That’s how they’re getting Reset, and probably a bunch of other drugs. They’re making them off the aliens. They’re keeping those aliens in there, torturing them in the name of science.” He turns back to Ianto as realisation begins to dawn on his team’s faces. “Ianto? Can they be saved?”

“So far gone,” Ianto says sorrowfully. “I could take them back. But they will always wear the marks.”

“Do what you can for them,” Jack says. “Don’t get hurt. And leave the men alone for now.”

“I want to kill them,” Ianto sulks. “Take them and give them to my gwyllgi, taste their last breaths.”

“Let _us_ deal with them,” Jack says, taking Ianto’s arms. “Please.”

It takes what seems like forever, but Ianto eventually nods and vanishes. Bluebells float down around Jack. They disappear the moment they touch his skin.

* * *

At Jack’s urging, Martha lets Torchwood take care of the cleanup and heads back to London, trusting that Jack will know what to do. Ianto takes the aliens somewhere. Jack does not ask where, knowing that if it had been left to him, he would have had no choice but to euthanise them.

Some of the people working at the Pharm genuinely had no idea of the monstrosities they were participating in. Those people were given just enough amnesia pills to wipe out their memories of their jobs there.

Those who knew what they were doing, however, were given enough to wipe them back to pre-pubescence. Jack thinks that this is a fitting punishment. Ianto is reluctantly mollified when he visits them in the hospital and sees them being taught multiplication tables.

“Two and two is four,” he tells Jack. “But two with two is one.”

Jack attempts to puzzle that out, then gives it up as a bad job. Ianto laughs.

“Something easier?” he says. “Voiceless cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters.”

“What’s that?” Toshiko asks, setting down her bag.

“The wind,” Jack replies. “Also, weren’t you supposed to take today off?”

“Riddles?” Toshiko asks, pointedly ignoring Jack’s question.

“In spring I look gay, decked in comely array,” Ianto says. “In summer more clothing I wear.”

“Pity,” Jack interrupts.

“When colder it grows, I fling off my clothes,” Ianto continues, throwing a paper ball at Jack. “And in winter quite naked appear.” He points a warning finger at Jack. “Don’t say it.”

Jack pouts as Toshiko taps her chin thoughtfully. “What would – oh! A tree.”

“Wonderfully done,” Ianto says.

“What kind of running means walking?” Owen grouses, stomping over to his workstation.

“Does this have anything to do with why you’re here two hours later than you’re supposed to be?” Jack asks.

“Running out of petrol,” Owen says. Toshiko hides a laugh. Jack is not nearly as restrained.

It appears, Jack thinks, that Toshiko and Owen have begun to warm up to Ianto. Whether this is because they have forgotten what he is capable of or because they think he means them no harm is debatable. He certainly has been putting effort into charming them. Perhaps he knows that Jack has decided against Retconning them. In that case, it would certainly be easier on all involved parties if he got along with them.

And knowing that, Jack is – content.

* * *

“Call from the hospital,” Toshiko says. “Whole bunch of patients all found in apparent comas. Peculiar symptoms – they reckon it’s something for us.”

“When did this start?” Jack asks.

“The wind turned black yesterday,” Ianto says.

“Started yesterday,” Toshiko says, glancing at Ianto.

“Something we should know?” Jack asks.

“What are the symptoms?” Ianto asks Toshiko.

She glances down at her notes. “Apparently, they’ve all been drained of moisture. And they’ve got heartbeats, but they’re not breathing.”

“Alltud,” Ianto muses.

“Ash-what?” Jack asks.

“They are the outcasts,” Ianto says, frowning. “They should not have been freed.”

Jack’s heart does a peculiar skip. “Faeries?” he asks.

“Of a forgotten clan,” Ianto says. “In human terms, you would say that they were exiled from our realm for their crimes.”

“What did they do?” Toshiko asks.

Ianto smiles slightly. “Don’t ask,” he says. “They were of all elements, but had only one water and one air between them.” He looks at Jack. “Permit me to handle this. It is our law.”

Jack spreads his hands. “Feel free,” he says. “Will you be able to save the victims?”

Ianto considers that. “If their breaths are found,” he says. “I will do my best.”

And the strange part, Jack reflects, is that Ianto genuinely means that.

* * *

Ianto is radiating heat underneath him. For someone who supposedly must choose to generate his body heat, he feels very human.

Of course, Jack thinks, it is not necessarily a compliment to call someone human.

Looking or being human is no guarantee of humanity, that abstract, puzzling term. Humanity. He once looked the word up on a whim. According to his dictionary, it means “human nature or qualities; kindness; the human race.” This is what he finds most peculiar – that kindness is the reflective quality of humankind. In his more morose moments, he thinks that inconstancy might be a more apt meaning for the word.

And yet, there is something about humans. Something that lets them hold on where no other species in the universe can. Not their bodies, not even their minds, but some innate, desperate need for survival. Inconstancy. And kindness. Evening primroses and bluebells. It is no coincidence that the last surviving race, just before the universe blinks out, was and will be humans.

Toshiko once asked him why so many aliens were interested in Earth. Not Earth, he had told her. Humans. But what is it about humans? Even him. Not mortal, but human, as Ianto calls him. Killed and always coming back, tenacious, desperately clinging to the small shreds of hope left to him. Jack smiles at the thought that he epitomises humanity, in all its forms and all its meanings.

Ianto tugs on his shoulders. “What’s got you so pensive?” he asks.

Jack leans down to kiss Ianto gently. “Nothing, really,” he says. When it comes down to it, there is little use in thinking of such things. What will happen, will. Jack’s lips graze Ianto’s skin as he shifts to lie down comfortably next to Ianto.

“Liar,” Ianto says without heat.

Jack smiles. “Sometimes,” he says, and Ianto laughs. Jack thinks that maybe he is getting the hang of faerie double-speak. Another few years and he might actually understand half the words that come out of Ianto’s mouth.

Of course, for all he knows, Ianto might be gone in a few years. Might lose interest or be dead. And that is a peculiar thought. Ianto had said once that he lived in time and was made of light and wind. How long does such a creature live?

“Hey, Ianto?”

Ianto makes an interrogative sound.

“How long does a creature of time live?” Jack asks.

Ianto smiles a secretive smile. He does not answer.

Jack reflects on the silence for a while. Then, a smile stretching his own lips, he wraps Ianto in his arms and lets himself drift into sleep.

He dreams of bluebells and laughter.


End file.
